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ADDRESS 



OF 



PRESIDENT WILSON 



TO THE 



AMERICAN FEDERATION 
OF LABOR CONVENTION 

BUFFALO, N. Y., NOVEMBER 12, 1917 

i 







WASHINGTON 
1917 




D. of D. 

DEC 22 191? 



2GI3 
. VV &5 . 

Mr. President, Delegates or the American Federation of Labor, 
Ladies and Gentlemen : 

I esteem it a great privilege and a real honor to be thus admitted 
to your public counsels. When your executive committee paid me 
the compliment of inviting me here I gladly accepted the invitation 
because it seems to me that this, above all other times in our history, 
is the time for common counsel, for the drawing together not only of 
the energies but of the minds of the Nation. I thought that it was a 
welcome opportunity for disclosing to you some of the thoughts that 
have been gathering in my mind during these last momentous months. 

critical time in history. 

I am introduced to you as the President of the United States, and 
yet I would be pleased if you would put the thought of the office 
into the background and regard me as one of your fellow citizens 
who has come here to speak, not the words of authority, but the 
words of counsel ; the words which men should speak to one another 
who wish to be frank in a moment more critical perhaps than the 
history of the world has ever yet known ; a moment when it is every 
man's duty to forget himself, to forget his own interests, to fill him- 
self with the nobility of a great national and world conception, and 
act upon a new platform elevated above the ordinary affairs of life 
and lifted to where men have views of the long destiny of mankind. 

I think that in order to realize just what this moment of counsel is 
it is very desirable that we should remind ourselves just how this 
war came about and just what it is for. You can explain most wars 
very simply, but the explanation of this is not so simple. Its roots 
run-deep into all the obscure soils of history, and in my view this is 
the last decisive issue between the old principle of power and the 
new principle of freedom. 

WAR STARTED BY GERMANY. 

The war was started by Germany. Her authorities deny that they 
started it, but I am willing to let the statement I have just made 
await the verdict of history. And the thing that needs to be ex- 
plained is why Germany started the war. Remember what the 
position of Germany in the wprld was — as enviable a position as 
a\iy nation has ever occupied. The whole world stood at admiration 
ici her wonderful intellectual and material achievements. All the 
intellectual men of the world went to school to her. As a university 
man I have been surrounded by men trained in Germany, men who 
had resorted to Germany because nowhere else could they get such 
thorough and searching training, particularly in the principles of 
science and the principles that underlie modern material achievement. 

24618—17 ( :j | 



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Her men of science had made her industries perhaps the most com- 
petent industries of the world, and the label " Made in Germany " 
was a guarantee of good workmanship and of sound material. She 
had access to all the markets of the world, and every other nation who 
traded in those markets feared Germany because of her effective and 
almost irresistible competition. She had a " place in the sun." 

Germany's industrial growth. 

Why was she not satisfied ? What more did she want ? There was 
nothing in the world of peace that she did not already have and 
have in abundance. We boast of the extraordinary pace of Ameri- 
can advancement. We show with pride the statistics of the increase 
of our industries and of the population of our cities. Well, those 
statistics did not match the recent statistics of Germany. Her old 
cities took on youth and grew faster than any American cities ever 
grew. Her old industries opened their eyes and saw a new world 
and went out for its conquest. And yet the authorities of Germany 
were not satisfied. 

You have one part of the answer to the question why she was not 
satisfied in her methods of competition. There is no important in- 
dustry in Germany upon which the Government has not laid its 
hands, to direct it and, when necessity arose, control it ; and you have 
only to ask any man whom you meet who is familiar with the con- 
ditions that prevailed before the war in the matter of national com- 
petition to find out the methods of competition which the German 
manufacturers and exporters used under the patronage and support 
of the Government of Germany. You will find that they were the 
same sorts of competition that we have tried to prevent by law within 
our own borders. If they could not sell their goods cheaper than we 
could sell ours at a profit to themselves they could get a subsidy from 
the Government which made it possible to sell them cheaper anyhow, 
and the conditions of competition were thus controlled in large measure 
by the German Government itself. 

BERLIN-BAGDAD RAILWAY. 

But that did not satisfy the German Government. All the while 
there was lying behind its thought and in its dreams of the future 
a political control which would enable it in the long run to dominate 
the labor and the industry of the world. They were not content with 
success by superior achievement; they wanted success by authority. 
I suppose very few of you have thought much about the Berlin-to- 
Bagdad Railway. The Berlin-Bagdad Railway was constructed in 
order to run the threat of force down the flank of the industrial 
undertakings of half a dozen other countries; so that when German 
competition came in it would not be resisted too far, because there 
was always the possibility of getting German armies into the heart of 
that country quicker than any other armies could be got there. 



Look at the map of Europe now ! Germany in thrusting upon us 
again and again the discussion of peace talks, — about what? Talks 
about Belgium; talks about northern France; talks about Alsace- 
Lorraine. Well .those are deeply interesting subjects to us and to 
them, but they are not the heart of the matter. Take the map and 
look at it. Germany has absolute control of Austria-Hungary, prac- 
tical control of the Balkan States, control of Turkey, control of Asia 
Minor. I saw a map in which the whole thing was printed in appro- 
priate black the other day, and the black stretched all the way from 
Hamburg to Bagdad — the bulk of German power inserted into the 
heart of the world. If she can keep that, she has kept all that her 
dreams contemplated when the war began. If she can keep that, 
her power can disturb the world as long as she keeps it, always pro- 
vided, for I feel bound to put this proviso in — always provided the 
present influences that control the German Government continue to 
control it. I believe that the spirit of freedom can get into the hearts 
of Germans and find as fine a welcome there as it can find in any 
other hearts, but the spirit of freedom does not suit the plans of the 
Pan-Germans. Power can not be used with concentrated force 
against free peoples if it is used by free people. 

PEACE RUMORS. 

You know how many intimations come to us from one of the 
central powers that it is more anxious for peace than the chief cen- 
tral power, and you know that it means that the people in that central 
power know that if the war ends as it stands they will in effect 
themselves be vassals of Germany, notwithstanding that their popu- 
lations are compounded of all the peoples of that part of the world, 
and notwithstanding the fact that they do not wish in their pride 
and proper spirit of nationality to be so absorbed and dominated. 
Germany is determined that the political power of the world shall 
belong to her. There have been such ambitions before. They have 
been in part realized, but never before have those ambitions been 
based upon so exact and precise and scientific a plan of domination. 

May I not say that it is amazing to me that any group of persons 
should be so ill-informed as to suppose, as some groups in Russia 
apparently suppose, that any reforms planned in the interest of the 
people can live in the presence of a Germany powerful enough to 
undermine or overthrow them by intrigue or force? Any body of 
free men that compounds with the present German Government is 
compounding for its own destruction. But that is not the whole of 
the story. Any man in America or anywhere else that supposes that 
the free industry and enterprise of the world can continue if the 
Pan-German plan is achieved and German power fastened upon the 
world is as fatuous as the dreamers in Russia. What I am opposed 
to is not the feeling of the pacifists, but their stupidity. My heart is 



6 

with them, but my mind has a contempt for them. I want peace. but( 
I know how to get it, and they do not. 

col. house's mission. 

You will notice that I sent a friend of mine, Col. House, to Eu- 
rope, who is as great a lover of peace as any man in the world; but 
I didn't send him on a peace mission yet. I sent him to take part in , 
a conference as to how the war was to be won, and he knows, as I 
know, that that is the way to get peace, if you want it for more than 
a few minutes. 

. All of this is a preface to the conference that I have referred to 
with regard to what we are going to do. If we are true friends of 
freedom, our own or anybody else's, we will see that the power of 
this country and the productivity of this country is raised to its 
absolute maximum, and that absolutely nobody is allowed to stand 
in the way of it. When I say that nobody is allowed to stand in the 
way I do not mean that they shall be prevented by the power of the 
Government but by the power of the American spirit. Our duty, if 
we are to do this great thing and show America to be what we believe 
her to be — the greatest hope and energy of the world — is to stand 
together night and day until the job is finished. 

LABOR MUST BE FREE. 

While we are fighting for freedom we must see, among other 
things, that labor is free; and that means a number of interesting 
things. It means not only that we must c do what we have declared 
our purpose to do, see that the conditions of labor are not rendered 
more onerous by the war, but also that we shall see to it that the 
instrumentalities by which the conditions of labor are improved are 
not blocked or checked. That we must do. That has been the matter 
about which I have taken pleasure in conferring from time to time 
with your president, Mr. Gompers; and if I may be permitted to 
do so, I want to express my admiration of his patriotic courage, his 
large vision, and his statesmanlike sense of what has to be done. I 
like to lay my mind alongside of a mind that knows how to pull in 
harness. The horses that kick over the traces will have to be put in 
corral. 

Now, to stand together means that nobody must interrupt the 
processes of our energy if the interruption can possibly be avoided 
without the absolute invasion of freedom. To put it concretely, that 
means this: Nobody has a right to stop the processes of labor until 
all the methods of conciliation and settlement have been exhausted. 
And I might as well say right here that I am not talking to you 
alone. You sometimes stop the courses of labor, but there are others 
who do the same, and I believe I am speaking from my own 
experience not only, but from the experience of others when I say 



'that .you are reasonable in a larger number of cases than the capi- 
talists. I am not saying these things to them personally yet, because 
I hare not had a chance, but they have to be said, not in any spirit 
of criticism, but in order to clear the atmosphere and come down 
to business. Everybody on both sides has now got to transact busi- 
ness, and a settlement is never impossible when both sides want to do 
the square and right thing. 

SETTLEMENT HARD TO AVOID. 

Moreover, a settlement is always hard to avoid when the parties 
can be brought face to face. I can differ from a man much more 
radically when he is not in the room than I can when he is in the room, 
because then the awkward thing is he can come back at me and 
answer what I say. It is always dangerous for a man to have the 
floor entirely to himself. Therefore, we must insist in every instance 
that the parties come into each other's presence and there discuss 
the issues between them, and not separately in places which have 
no communication with each other. I always like to remind myself 
of a delightful saying of an Englishman of the past generation, 
Charles Lamb. He stuttered a little bit, and once when he was with 
a group of friends he spoke very harshly of some man who was not 
present. One of his friends said : " Why, Charles I didn't know that 
you knew so and so." " O-o-oh," he said. " II d-d-don't ; I-I can't 
h-h-hate a m-m-man I-I know." There is a great deal of human 
nature, of very pleasant human nature, in the saying. It is hard to 
hate a man you know T . I may admit, parenthetically, that there are 
some politicians whose methods I do not at all believe in, but they 
are jolly good fellows, and if they only would not talk the wrong 
kind of politics to me, I would love to be with them. 

NO SYMPATHY W T ITH MOB SPIRIT. 

So it is all along the line, in serious matters and things less serious. 
We are all of the same clay and spirit, and we can get together if we 
desire to get together. Therefore, my counsel to you is this : Let us 
show ourselves Americans by showing that we do not want to go 
off in separate camps or groups by ourselves, but that we want to 
cooperate with all other classes and all other groups in the common 
enterprise which is to release the spirits of the world from bondage. 
I would be willing to set that up as the final test of an American. 
That is the meaning of democracy. I have been verjr much dis- 
tressed, my fellow citizens, by some of the things that have hap- 
pened recently. The mob spirit is displaying itself here and there in 
this country. I have no sympathy with what some men are saying, 
but I have no sympathy with the men who take their punishment 
into their own hands; and I want to say to every man who does join 
such a mob that I do not recognize him as worthy of the free insti- 
tutions of the United States. There are some organizations in this 



,. L . 020 914 155 3f 

country whose object is anarchy and me ubsuuuuuh ^x «»n) U ut i\ 

would not meet their efforts by making myself partner in destroying] 
the law. I despise and hate their purposes as much as any man, but] 
I respect the ancient processes of justice; and I would be too proud 
not to see them done justice, however wrong they are. 

MUST OBEY COMMON COUNSEL. 

So I want to utter my earnest protest against any manifestation 
of the spirit of lawlessness anywhere or in any cause. Why, gen- 
tlemen, look what it means. We claim to be the greatest democratic; 
people in the world, and democracy means first of all that we can; 
govern ourselves. If our men have not self-control, then they arej 
not capable of that great thing which we call democratic government. 
A man who takes the law into his own hands is not the right man to; 
cooperate in any formation or development of law 7 and institutions, I 
and some of the processes by which the struggle between capital! 
and labor is carried on are processes that come very near to taking] 
the law into your own hands. I do not mean for a moment to com- i 
pare them with what I have just been speaking of, but I want you to ] 
see that they are mere gradations in this manifestation of the un- j 
willingness to cooperate, and that the fundamental lesson of the 
wdiole situation is that we must not only take common counsel, but! 
that we must yield to and obey common counsel. Not all of the 
instrumentalities for this are at hand. I am hopeful that in the j 
very near future new instrumentalities may be organized by which 
we can see to it that various things that are now going on ought not; 
to go on. There are various processes of the dilution of labor and the 
unnecessary substitution of labor and the bidding in distant markets 
and unfairly upsetting the whole competition of labor which ought 
not to go on. I mean now on the part of employers, and we must 
interject some instrumentality of cooperation by which the fair 
thing will be done all around. I am hopeful that some such in- 
strumentalities may be devised, but whether they are or not, w T e must 
use those that we have and upon every occasion where it is necessary 
have such 'an instrumentality originated upon that occasion. 

So, my fellow citizens, the reason I came aw T ay from Washington 
is that I sometimes get lonely down here. So many people come 
to Washington who know things that are not so, and so few people 
who know anything about what the people of the United States 
are thinking about. I have to come away and get reminded of 
the rest of the country. I have to come away and talk to men 
who are up against the real tiling, and say to them, " I am with you 
if you are with me." And the only test of being with me is not to 
think about me personally at all, but merely to think of me as the 
expression for the time being of the power and dignity and hope of 
the United States. 

o 



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